Martinez Family Journal

Last night I was awakened in the middle of the night and it was for the nicest of reasons.  Any time one if awakened in the middle of the night, it doesn't seem good, you are tired and cranky if you are me.  But it was so peaceful, it was sprinkling on my face and Matty's. Actually on Matty's whole body, for he had crawled out of his sleeping bag and was lain out stretched across the entire futon practically in all directions.  that boy is a wild and uncontained sleeper.  :-)  We sleep on the balcony many weekend nights in the summer and it was nice, but I had forgotten just how much it sprinkles during the middle of the night in monsoon season, June to August.   

 I have been working at Carrie Tingley Hospital, a very old hospital with quite a past, from being approved by a friendship between Clyde Tingley and his socialite wife, Carrie and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt way back long ago.  It began in T or C and came to ABQ eventually.  Now it is a well run hospital for outpatient childrens' specialiy clinics for madicaid kids mostly, from throughout New Mexico.  Kids every day come from very long drives to see the doctors here for serious illnesses, when their small town does not have specialty doctors with which to treat them properly.  It is very different from every other nursing job I have ever had.  mostly for the better.  It has been quite an adjustment for the entire family working harder at housework and sharing more of the daily responsibilities, and just having me gone a lot more.  But our debt is being paid rapidly and that is very very very good.  Now we can afford to send them to HOpe for another year and that is very good.  the education they are receiving there is excellent for NM.  

Drew has been raising and taking carer of Shadow our newest family member, our delightful black Aussie mix.  He is msotly Aussie but appears to be a black golden retriver.  Taht is the best expl;anation I can give him.  But behaviorally he is very much an Aussie: attentive, always watching us, every second of every day, almsot when he is asleep also, and he is always with us.  We have set up gates, baby gates at the stairs and around the edges of the kitchen dining area, and he whines when we leave himin the kitchen alone, he is a true Aussie and wants to be glued to us.  As they say in Aussie circles: a velcro Aussie through and through.  he is delightful and full of spunk and vim and vigor.  sometimes a bit too much so.  Sometimes we wonder aloud if we would have done well to choose his very timid sister, a very lap doggish beautiful Aussie looking just like him but with some attractive white markings.  But she was unreasonably timid and not too playful from what we could see, so we declined.  the foster mom who raised them from birth in Clovis NM said she called him Mr. Personality, Shadow that is, for he was so full of spunk and delight and challenging her.  Always one to push the envelope behaviorally. '

the death of heather.  My dearest friend Heather was killed in a tragic hit and run bicycle accident on the west side of town high up on the mesa, overlooking the entire valley, training for a triathlon on the first whole day of summer, JUne 22.  It was something that of course, took the whole community by complete surprise.  Heather was about the finest person I could ever expect to know and a golden golden friend.  there was never ever a better friend to me, than Heather.  Her absence will be sorely sorely missed.  I had planned to go paragliding with her, and give her that gift as a belated birthday present.  

With Shadow I have discovered the joy of early am tranquility of walking in the desert before the sun had come up over the mtns and there is yet plenty of light out.  It is sooo peaceful and cool.  I almost had to put on an extra long sleeve shirt this am.  I made coffee and took it with me as we walked east til the sun came over the mtn's edge and then headed back west towards home.  an hours' walk and it was wonderful.  It we didn't have Shadow I would not have known the joy of early am walks alone in the quiet desert beauty.